Google Shopping – The Balance Between Old & New

One of the most talked about changes introduced by Google on May 31, 2012, is the launch of a paid program from Google Shopping based on Product Listing Ads (PLA). Since its announcement, we have seen a huge change in shopping results. Google Shopping listings replace the current Google Product Search listings, which are part of the organic search listings. In this post, I will explain what Google Shopping is all about, how it affects retail merchants and outline steps to mitigate the impact and seize opportunity. The Old Model Since 2002, Google has been listing relevant products when users searched using keywords with commercial intent. Google acquired the information for these listings through two sources – its own crawls of websites with product information and the products feeds supplied by vendors through the Google Merchant Center. These listings were part of Univer...